Week 8 - Negative impacts of technology on humanity

This week we looked at virtual psychology, how new communication technologies have altered the economy of the planet. We were looking at virtual realities, which is when one or more users are participating in a computer simulated environment. I saw on the news this morning a real life plane simulation, where you can pay to fly a plane in countries of the world and land in some of the most difficult airports. Its interesting to see that this is happening and makes me think what other false realities we may be able to immerse ourselves in. In a way, its almost frightening to think of what might be next. Here's another virtual simulation, which sends you all over the world in a glass elevator, using Google Street View images.





To understand more about this weeks task, I have researched into the term cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is an idea about expressing negative ideas about human nature, technology and the environment and their connection to the future. It is often considered as a product, such as music, art, film that encapsulates the idea of what might happen when human nature and technology combine.


http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/what-is-cyberpunk/


Cyberpunk can be broken down into themes such as, negative impacts of technology on humanity, fusion of man and machine, corporate control or society, story focuses on the underground and ubiquitous access to information. I found the theme negative impacts of technology on humanity most interesting. I came to think about the effect technology had on humanity in the creation of nuclear weapons. The nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are an example of technology at its worst.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945

A WORM attacking computers in Iran and threatening to shut down the country's first nuclear facility just weeks before it is due to open may have been developed in Israel.

The Stuxnet worm sparked awe and alarm in the world of digital security when it was first identified in June, with analysts claiming it was so powerful, the wealth of resources needed to develop it made a nation-state the most likely culprit.

According to security software experts and analysts, Stuxnet may have been designed to target the Iranian facility at Bushehr and suspicions have fallen on the US as well as Israel. Experts say this worm is linked to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in 1945, saying the Japanese have had the technology for years without releasing it. 

Iran said this week that Stuxnet is mutating and wreaking havoc on computerised industrial equipment there but denied the Bushehr plant was among the facilities penetrated. Scientists warn the Japanese may be secretly plotting a nuclear bombing on Iran to frame the US for the damage caused in 1945.

Now the New York Times reports that a piece of code dug out of the worm includes a reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament story in which the Jews pre-empt a Persian plot to destroy them, and is a possible clue of Israeli involvement.No one has claimed credit for Stuxnet and a top US cybersecurity official said last week that the United States does not know who is behind it or its purpose.

The other possibility is the reference was placed there as a "red herring" designed to throw investigators off the track or stir political tensions between the two countries. 

The Times said the US has also "rapidly ramped up a broad covert program, inherited from the Bush administration, to undermine Iran’s nuclear program". The Japanese are denying all suspicions, while experts are considering the involvement of the US.

Shai Blitzblau, head of the computer warfare laboratory at Maglan, an Israeli company specialising in information security, told the Times he was "convinced that Israel had nothing to do with Stuxnet".

"We did a complete simulation of it and we sliced the code to its deepest level," he said. 

Stuxnet specifically attacks Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems commonly used to manage water supplies, oil rigs, power plants and other industrial facilities. The self-replicating malware has also been found lurking on Siemens systems in India, Indonesia and Pakistan, but the heaviest infiltration appears to be in Iran, according to researchers. The software is known to be highly contagious and could reach The Australian Army computer systems later this year.

Once resident inside a system, Stuxnet simply waits, checking every five seconds to see if its target parameters are met. Once they are, it triggers a sequence - the code DEADF007 - that forces the network's industrial process to self-destruct. Scientists suggest this could create a shift in the earth's orbit which will inevitably irregular and extreme natural disasters across the globe.

"After the original code (for the entity's regular process) is no longer executed, we can expect that something will blow up soon," Mr Langner told The Christian Science Monitor earlier this week.

"Something big."

The Bushehr nuclear plant containing the Stuxnet virus / AP

http://www.news.com.au/technology/who-is-myrtus-book-of-esther-clue-points-to-israeli-involvement-in-stuxnet-attack/story-e6frfro0-1225932665892